This invention pertains to mobile vehicles for trimming or hedging rows of trees, shrubs, brush, hedges and the like, and more particularly to improvements in the cutter assembly on such vehicles, and to provisions thereon for collection and disposal of limbs and branches which are cut during a hedging operation.
It has now become common practice to trim rowed trees in citrus groves or fruit orchards, in order to maintain a tree profile that it is best adapted to mechanical picking, while also opening up the grove or orchard to additional sunlight for improvement of yield.
Previously known trimming and hedging devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,299,129; 2,815,048; 2,940,486; 3,192,695; 3,032,956; 3,246,460; 3,597,908; 3,605,392 and 3,635,004. Perusal of these patents will reveal that the devices disclosed therein can, in many instances, be exceedingly large for use between rows of trees, quite expensive, and extremely dangerous to the operator of the machine and to any workers in the vacinity thereof. The element of danger is especially great when the cutter assembly of the trimmer comprises circular saw blades which rotate at high speeds while being driven at high levels of power. Use of circular saw blades under such conditions is highly dangerous in that quite often the blades break, flying in all directions, and when limbs of a large size are cut off they can be thrown at high velocity for a considerable distance. Even though the operator is protected by a cage, he is sometimes severely injured nonetheless, and other workers around the machine are similarly imperiled.
Even though the objectionable size, expense and the great danger associated with some commercially available hedgers has been fully apparent for some time, there has nonetheless remained a need for a safer, smaller and less expensive machine. In addition, there has been an absence of any provision on the mobile vehicle for collecting and disposing of limbs and branches as they are cut off, or for automatically maintaining the pitch angle of the cutter assembly at a selected angle in order to trim or hedge all trees in a row to a chosen profile. With previous trimmers, cut limbs and branches have been allowed to fall to the ground indiscriminately in the grove and a substantial amount of time has been required to pick them up and haul them out of the grove to another site where they are burned. It should also be pointed out that even though some of the previous hedgers have been provided with control apparatus whereby a selected pitch angle of the cutter assembly is established and then maintained during hedging by hand control of the apparatus by the hedger operator, it can be very difficult if not impossible to satisfactorily maintain a desired pitch angle when the hedger moves over uneven or bumpy ground.
Therefore, a principle object of the present invention is to provide a mobile vehicular hedger or trimmer whereby the aforestated dangers and disadvantages of prior machines are circumvented.
Accordingly, one specific object of the present invention is to provide a hedger wherein the cutter for limbs and branches is a chain saw having provisions whereby the saw cuts limber branches rather than merely pushing them aside.
Another object is to provide a hedger of the aforesaid type wherein a selected pitch angle of the saw can be established and then maintained throughout a hedging operation.
Even another object is to provide a hedger of the aforesaid type having means on the mobile vehicle for collecting cut limbs and branches as they fall and, where preferred, for disposing of such cuttings at the site of the hedging operation.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description thereof and the appended claims.